


Something Bad Had Happened

by McParrot



Series: Family History [2]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Team, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 00:35:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21818209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McParrot/pseuds/McParrot
Summary: Ianto woke up knowing something bad had happened. It just didn’t make sense because when he’d woken up knowing that, he’d thought it had happened to Jack not himself.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Series: Family History [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1572061
Comments: 3
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING. Graphic descriptions of torture
> 
> This is the middle story in my Family History trilogy. The first story was Weta and the last story is Family History. You don’t need to have read any of those stories to understand this one. Just know that in Weta, Jack told the team that he had given birth to a daughter during a time of war when he was sixteen. The last time he saw her she was sixteen and with Tosh’s help he’d sent her a message saying he would see her soon. He intended to take the long route to get there but fully intended to be back in her life not long after he had seemed to leave.
> 
> McParrot is uploading all her fic to AO3  
> These pieces have not been updated or re-edited  
> This was first posted on FF.net in June 2009

Something bad had happened.   
Something really bad had happened.   
Ianto dragged his eyes open, trying to orientate himself, place himself in time, feel his body… remember.   
Ow! Fucking Shit, God he hurt. Agonising pain assaulted him as he tried to make sense of the world. His eyes told him he was lying on the grating beside the bottom of the invisible lift. He was on his side. His body told him there was something flat pillowing his head. His head, his chest and his arms hurt. Badly. Different hurts. Breathing hurt. Something was annoying his face. He placed that quite quickly, it was an oxygen mask.  
He had a horrendous headache. The blood pulsed erratically in his tender skull with enough pressure to shatter something. His chest felt as if he’d been sat on by an elephant. Breathing was bad, really bad. Broken ribs maybe and yet his skin felt burnt. His arms seemed to have been flayed, and crushed, were still being forced through a mangle although obviously they weren’t. Beyond that his whole body ached, just ached as if he’d done something really physically exerting, like climbing a mountain or shovelling tons of rocks, for days. He tried to move and he couldn’t. It wasn’t the freaky sort of inability to move that would have told him he was paralysed, it was just that he was so exhausted he could do little more than blink. There was absolutely no energy to power his muscles.   
There was more. The taste in his mouth and his nose told him he’d been sick. His fuzzy brain wondered who was going to clean that up because vomiting through the grating had to have made a hell of a mess that wasn’t going to be easy to get to. Knowing his colleagues they’d just leave it there for him to deal with when he was well enough. Embarrassingly a certain smell and a nasty sensation in his trousers told him that he’d done more than just vomit.  
He was lying here in his own shit.  
He wished he hadn’t woken up.   
What the hell had happened? What was happening? Where were the others?  
With some sense of relief he realised he could hear voices from the med bay. Owen’s was sharp and slightly panicked, Gwen and Tosh were loud, argumentative and frightened. At least they were all there and obviously alive. He forced himself to try and make sense of things. He didn’t think what was bothering them was an immediate threat. There was something odd though. He could hear another voice, a stranger. A woman. She sounded as if she was giving orders and the team didn’t like it at all.  
Ianto felt even more confused. In front of him and slightly to the side was the big green med kit. It was open and medical stuff - wrappers, syringes, ampoules – were strewn across the grating and the steps. In the corner of his vision he could see the ambu-bag, the big grey squashy thing used to squeeze air into someone’s lungs when they’d stopped breathing. He shuddered. His exhausted muscles barely rippled. With tremendous effort he managed to move his head a little. Now he could see the defibrillator, the paddles lying on the floor. His heart jumped oddly. God, that couldn’t be good.  
He was starting to feel really frightened.  
Nothing he could see told him what had happened.  
He hurt badly and he couldn’t move, therefore something bad must have happened to him. It just didn’t make sense because when he’d woken up knowing something bad had happened, he’d thought it had happened to Jack.  
‘Ianto?’ Tosh was suddenly at his side.  
There seemed to be a crack in his eye. A wobbly line ran up her face as she knelt beside him. How had he broken his eye? ‘You’re awake,’ she said soothingly. ‘That’s good.’ Her hand rested on his cheek. Tosh didn’t usually touch him. It must be bad. There was someone else behind him. He felt a hand on his shoulder. The hand moved to feel for the pulse in his neck.   
‘You’re going to be fine,’ Tosh told him. ‘It’s okay Ianto. You had poison in your system but you’re all right now. You’ll be fine.’ She looked up and nodded at the person behind him. Her hand moved up and fiddled with something above him and as his eyes followed her hand he realised that there was nothing wrong with his eyes. The “crack” was an IV line snaking up past his face. The business end seemed to be stuck into his neck.  
Disconcertingly Ianto realised there were more lines, cords running from his chest. The odd beeping sound he’d barely noticed was a heart monitor. He put the clues together. His heart had stopped. Why? They’d resuscitated him. He gasped. Tosh put her hand back on his head, stroked his hair. ‘Are you okay now?’ She looked pale. ‘You gave us a real fright.’ Her eyes filled with tears and she gave a watery smile. ‘It scared me anyway. Owen was just pleased to play with that new kit he nicked from the NHS. Ianto,’ she stroked some more, ‘I need you to stay here for a while. Okay?’ She smiled. ‘I know you. You’re going to be wanting to race up and start cleaning up but you’ve got to stay still for a while. Okay?’ Her smile was crooked, anxious. She was worried about him. ‘I also know it’s not very comfortable but just lie here and rest. We have to help Owen with Jack now, then we’ll come back and get you cleaned up. All right?’  
Help with Jack? Ianto just stared at her. What was wrong with Jack? He couldn’t seem to speak.  
‘You can’t move can you?’ said a semi familiar voice behind him that he was quite sure he’d never heard before in his life. The timbre was feminine but the cadence, accent and tone were all Jack. What? Who? ‘You’ve survived flyer venom,’ the woman said. ‘Your energy stores have been totally depleted. That’s to be expected.’  
He swivelled his eyes upwards as a woman leant across him. He saw blue eyes, dark brows and little else from this angle. She was wearing a military looking leather jacket and he had the impression she was older than him. There was a green line running up her chin. He blinked. That wasn’t another tube, there really was a green line running down her jaw. ‘We’ve got you on a dextrose IV to help replenish energy but it will take a while for you to recover.’ She patted his shoulder and pulled up the blanket that was covering him with a well manicured hand. ‘You will be all right.’  
‘Ianto,’ Tosh said. ‘This is Lyndel. She saved your life.’  
Ianto couldn’t even say thanks.  
He was cold and confused and now Tosh had pointed it out he was uncomfortable. He lay there in something like suspended animation, his body moulding into the grating floor. The breeze coming through the grating chilled him. He didn’t seem to have any clothes on his upper body, just another mystery to add to the list.  
Have to help Owen with Jack?  
Lyndel? The woman’s name was Lyndel.  
Helping Jack. Jack had an alien egg in his belly. No, no that wasn’t right. That had happened months ago. He was fine now. Lyndel. Jack had told them about Lyndel when he was sick before they’d removed the alien egg. And suddenly Ianto knew why she was so familiar. She was Jack’s daughter. He’d seen her hologram.   
Lyndel was the teenage daughter that Jack had left behind in the 51st century when he’d run away from the Time Agency. He had her last message to him. It was a cube that played a hologram and Tosh had been able to make it work and then Jack had sent her a message through a TV broadcast that Ianto worked out she’d already received before she made the message that Jack had. The green line on her face was a tattoo. The woman was Lyndel. She just wasn’t a teenager anymore.  
All of that thinking was too much for him and he closed his eyes. The metal grill was cutting through him. If he stayed here long enough he would decompose and slide right through. He’d join the vomit and muck and over a century of detritus down there where no-one could clean. Ianto Jones, part of Torchwood decay.  
Time passed slowly, or maybe it was fast. He couldn’t tell.  
Then suddenly Jack was there. Without opening his eyes he knew it. ‘Ianto? Oh God Ianto I’m sorry.’ He was swept up in Jack’s arms, the pain jolting him startlingly awake. He must have moaned. Even so it was good to be lifted off the rough grating. Jack smelt of vomit too. And blood.   
Blood, there’d been a lot of blood but he couldn’t quite seem to remember why. He’d been with Jack, in the med bay with Jack. There’d been blood. His blood and Jack’s. Owen had finished with him. He’d pulled out the spikes from his wrists and bandaged his arms. A lot of the blood was his own. His arms really hurt.  
Owen had been ready to work on Jack when Tosh called out from her monitor. Ianto had looked at Owen but Owen was busy and Gwen was holding Jack. Ianto climbed up the stairs to see Tosh’s monitor showing two people standing out in the Plass waving at the camera above the water tower. He remembered thinking, Jesus, not now. Not with Jack like this. One of the people was John Hart.  
The other person was a somehow familiar looking woman wearing something that looked suspiciously like military uniform a la Battlestar Galactica. She was familiar but Ianto couldn’t place her. Hart had taken the woman by the shoulders and placed her on the paving stone of the invisible lift. He’d waved at the camera again and moved away.   
It was obvious to Tosh and Ianto that Jack was supposed to recognise the woman. The trouble was that while they both agreed she looked familiar they didn’t have a clue who she was. Ianto remembered the pain from the wounds in his wrists had been burning, spreading up his arms. He was distracted. Shrugging Tosh had pulled out her gun and keyed the lift control. The great machinery graunched and the lift started to descend. Tosh had her gun trained on the stranger.   
Ianto watched the lift descending as the burning in his arms increased. He was going to ask Owen for stronger painkillers. He’d twisted his arms trying to ease things but it seemed to make it worse, shooting pain through his bones into his whole body. It reached his shoulders, burnt into his spine and suddenly, instead of looking up at the lift he was looking at the grating on the floor. He’d screamed as the fire raced through his body then didn’t remember any more until he woke up on the floor.  
He shook with the memory of the dreadful pain.  
Jack pulled him closer, lifting him up off the grating and across his knees. That caused a completely different pain in his chest. He gasped. Yes he definitely had broken ribs. Unfortunately he was quite familiar with that unpleasant sensation. Jack pulled the blanket up around him as Ianto huddled into his warmth. His face pressed into Jack’s chest and he didn’t give a shit that Jack’s shirt was covered with blood, vomit, snot and probably cerebral spinal fluid. Even though Jack smelt really bad Ianto did too and in behind it all he still smelt like Jack and love and safety.  
Jack was trembling too. Disturbingly Ianto knew him well enough to recognise that he was in the recovery period after a traumatic death. Jack was holding on to him for dear life. Whatever had happened it had been really rough on him. His long lost daughter appearing in the middle of whatever this crisis was probably wasn’t helping things either. It certainly wasn’t helping Ianto.  
‘Jack mate,’ Owen was saying. ‘Let us take him. We need to warm him up and get him cleaned up. I need to check him over and make sure he’s still stable. Okay?’ He started trying to peel Jack away from Ianto. ‘You go and have a shower. We’ll look after him.’ And you look after yourself, was the unspoken thought behind Owen’s words.  
Jack just clutched him tighter.  
‘Lee… ah, Jack,’ the woman said. She had her hand on his shoulder. ‘He’ll be all right. I promise.’  
Jack wrapped around him, his forehead pressed to his. Warm tears splashed onto his face. God, what had happened? Jack was really going to pieces – and Ianto couldn’t do anything to help him. He didn’t even have the strength to speak. ‘Come on Jack,’ Gwen said. ‘I’ll come with you. See if I can find you some clean clothes and stuff.’ She took his hand and untangled his fingers from Ianto’s hair.  
‘Lyndel?’ Jack asked. There was a hitch in his voice.  
‘I’ll be here.’ She moved in to help Gwen. ‘Go get yourself sorted. I’ll help here and we’ll talk later. I’m afraid this isn’t just a social call.’ Her sleeve rode up as she stroked Jack and Ianto noticed a wrist strap just like her parent’s. She was Jack’s daughter but he had a disconcerting feeling that that didn’t automatically make her on their side. She had arrived with John Hart after all. Why was she here and what did she want?  
Owen and Lyndel picked Ianto up between them. Ianto got the feeling she could have slung him over her shoulder and carried him perfectly well on her own. As they carried him off to the med bay he could see Gwen leading a distressed looking Jack towards his office. His head was all bloody. ‘I will not be scrubbing your back though Jack Harkness,’ she said loudly as they headed up the stairs. The woman Lyndel gave a startled chuckle.  
Jack’s head was all bloody. Suddenly Ianto started to remember.  
twtwtwtwtwtw


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eight Hours earlier

Eight Hours Earlier.  
‘Well this makes a change,’ Jack said pointing out the SUV’s window. ‘Chasing aliens through a new housing development and not a creepy warehouse district.’  
‘Or a carpark,’ Ianto added.  
‘Or a carpark.’  
‘Still dark and cold and rainy though.’  
‘True.’ Jack keyed his coms. ‘Anything yet Tosh?’  
‘Yes definitely something. No cameras out there yet sorry, and the roads aren’t actually on the map but I’ve got you on the GPS. The energy trace, it’s definitely something living, is coming from somewhere about 150 metres east of where you are. There might be more than one.’  
‘East,’ Ianto said pointing to a row of nearly completed bungalows to their right. ‘They could be in a house.’ He groaned, ‘How much is it going to cost us to clean up if we wreck one of these houses?’  
‘We might have to buy it,’ Jack said. ‘Clean it up at our leisure.’ He turned and grinned. ‘Would you like to live in one of those?’  
Ianto gaped at him, visions of domestic bliss, back gardens with vegetable patches, curtains and carpets and Jack incongruously naked in the middle of it flashed through his mind. As he looked at Jack, his mouth open, trying to formulate an answer something flickered in the dark. ‘There!’  
Something moved between the houses. Ianto couldn’t really see it, couldn’t identify it but it certainly wasn’t human. Jack hit the brakes, pulled the steering wheel hard right and took them up over the curb and across the wasteland of building materials and clay that was the as yet unformed front yards of the new homes. Something moved in the head lights and Ianto stared. It looked like a tree! There was a large “trunk” with tentacles on top. It was about man sized and maybe tree wasn’t the right word, it was more like a tree stump or a sea anemone. A big sea anemone. It could move very fast although he couldn’t see how. It disappeared through an unfinished wall into a house.  
‘There,’ Ianto shouted again. Jack gave out a gasp and hit the brakes. Ianto was reaching for his gun, unbuckling his seat belt, hand on the door handle when he realised his companion wasn’t moving.  
‘Jack?’ Even in the pallid light from the streetlamps Ianto could tell that Jack had gone white. Ianto felt his heart go thunk. ‘Jack what’s wrong? Do you know what they are?’  
Blindly Jack groped for his hand. He took another gasping breath and seemed to be trying to calm himself. When he spoke his voice was nearly normal. ‘Yeah I know them,’ he said. ‘They’re the most horrible creatures you can imagine.’ He drew his gun. ‘Shoot to kill. About two foot below the tentacles is the best spot.’ His face was hard. ‘Give no quarter. We don’t want them here.’  
They slid out of the car into the rain and started moving towards the house using pallets of bricks as cover. ‘I never thought I’d see them here,’ Jack muttered but Ianto thought it was more to himself. ‘We need to know how many there are and what they’re doing here. Don’t let them capture you,’ he said grimly. Even as he said it Ianto saw a block of darkness move and before he could shout felt something drape itself around his neck. He saw Jack’s eyes go wide with horror and then tentacles were wrapping around them both, holding them tight. Jack was shouting, thrashing and hitting out with his whole body. He didn’t try to reason or charm. Ianto realised that Jack was not going without a fight and that was terrifying. His fighting was contagious. Ianto tried to get some leverage, inflict some damage on the strange textured, very bad smelling thing that had him in its grasp. It was useless.  
Moving as if they were sliding across the ground the creatures carried them effortlessly into the house.   
That was when he remembered that they’d never called for back-up or let the other’s know that they’d found the aliens.   
Once inside he was shoved up against a semi completed wall, his arm held up against the wall and without any warning something went bang. Shocking pain raced from his wrist and right through him. He started to slide down the wall but literally moments later his other arm was grasped and the bang and the pain happened on that side. Some tiny corner of his brain that could function despite the shock realised he’d just had both arms nailed to the wall.  
Even as he registered that his now released body was collapsing and being caught, agonizingly held, by the spikes through his wrists. He screamed as he tried to get his legs under him, hold himself up and relieve the pain. He heard Jack and jerked his head up to see that he had either had good luck or the presence of mind to drop to the ground before he too was nailed to a wall.  
The difference between Jack and Ianto was that Jack didn’t stop trying to get free. He wrenched his arms against the spikes putting his full body weight into it. His face screwed up with effort even as he screamed in agony. He kept trying to tear himself free.  
Ianto found he couldn’t stand up straight. His legs must have been bent when he was nailed. He had to crouch, leaning back against the wall to let it take as much strain as possible. He couldn’t contemplate trying to rip free the way Jack was. Then he saw why Jack was so desperate.  
It seemed like it came out of nowhere, a silver metal circlet a little like the alien mind probe that they had in the hub. One of the stubby tentacle things placed it over Jack’s head. He frantically tried to shake it off but the alien held it tight, using several tentacles to keep Jack’s head still. Six bulbous protuberances suddenly glowed and moved around the circlet. Jack’s wild eyes met Ianto’s and he seemed about to say something when the lumpy bits suddenly seemed to grow. They formed shiny points that kept extruding out from the band like metal snakes with sharp points. Ianto watched with sheer horror and Jack screamed in terror, his body thrashing wildly as he tried to escape.  
Jack shook his head trying to dislodge the device as the snaky things caressed his head, sensing what?  
Sensing… Oh dear god, no. Sensing where to go.  
Suddenly and all together they turned inwards. The noise Jack made was dreadful. They invaded his ears, his eyes and his nostrils and effortlessly worked their way in. Ianto couldn’t look away as the awful things pierced his lover. Blood ran down his face. Jack’s eyeballs burst and intraocular fluid joined the blood. He screamed and thrashed. Jack kept screaming, his legs twitching and thrashing on the floor. Ianto was screaming too. It was the most horrifying thing he had ever seen.  
The creature closest to Jack wrapped a tentacle around the device and suddenly its body glowed in rapidly changing colours. Blinking slightly, trying not to look at the macabre sight of his lover Ianto realised that it was like watching a projector. It was screening Jack’s life, backwards, in jerky out of focus episodes. Ianto could tell because briefly he recognised himself, blurry, and sort of round moving around as if in the creature. The ghastly thing really was a mind probe and it was reading Jack’s life.   
Jack’s screams stopped abruptly as blood gushed from his mouth. Ianto was fairly sure the screaming had torn something in his throat. Jack choked and vomited. Ianto got the impression he was trying to choke. The creature obviously got that too, pulling his head forward so that the blood and vomit would drain.  
In a way Ianto was pleased he hadn’t achieved it because even though he would have had a brief reprieve, the idea of coming back to life with that device still attached was just awful.  
Jack’s body movements became more feeble. The figures on the awful screen rushed backwards. If the creatures were surprised at how many memories Jack’s mind contained they didn’t show it in any way Ianto could see. Then suddenly the “display” went blank. Ianto could feel a change in the air, in the creatures. The one attached to Jack gave him a shake. The show started again, ran forward, ran back and went blank again. It happened again.   
Ianto realised what they were doing. It was like rewinding a video, trying to see if it would play better if you ran it forward and back again. Apparently it didn’t.   
The display stayed blank for long moments, then the images played again. Ianto thought these were from before the blank spot. The “show” finished moments later. It ran forward again, hit the blank spot and went forward and back several times around it. The smell in the room changed. There was no sound, the things milled around, rubbed each other’s “heads”. Ianto was sure they weren’t happy with whatever the blank part of Jack’s life represented. Whatever they wanted to know, whatever they’d come for was hidden there, he was sure of it.  
They were going to kill them now.  
They didn’t.   
They just left.  
Ianto cringed, waiting for an explosion that would kill them or something that didn’t come. Jack lay on the floor. His feet twitched and a moaning sound squeezed from his ruined throat occasionally. Bloody wrists held his arms above him against the wall. Ianto was sure he was conscious. He was blind and deaf and could have no idea that Ianto was still here, still alive and relatively undamaged. He didn’t know that the creature’s were gone, was probably trying to be prepared for the next torture they would try on him. He was slowly, painfully dying. Ianto just hoped like hell that that wasn’t going to happen before rescue came.  
He started to feel his own crucified arms again. The spikes were a “T” shape; there was no way to tear free from them. His legs cramped terribly, there was no comfortable position. He had no way of telling how long they’d been here. He tried to distract himself by working out what had actually happened. All he could fathom was that they had been deliberately targeted and ambushed. They had been after Jack, it wasn’t random. They hadn’t been the slightest bit interested in him. They wanted something Jack knew, only apparently Jack didn’t know it either. That blank spot had to be the two years the Time Agency had taken from him just before he left the service. What the hell had they needed to know?  
Time stretched interminably. Jack still twitched. It was still dark. Ianto had screamed himself hoarse but there was nobody there. He’d vomited, retching until he was hollow.  
Then he heard a vehicle, saw lights sweeping past. Car doors slammed, voices. The team, they were here! ‘Here,’ he called hoarsely. ‘Help! We’re here. Help!’  
Torchlight suddenly hit him full in the face. Silhouettes of people, guns at the ready. ‘Shit!’ Owen’s voice. ‘Ianto.’ The girls, calling his name. They were coming through the door directly across from him, coming towards him, their faces registering shock and concern. They could see him, they hadn’t seen…  
They were professionals, Owen came straight through the door, Tosh and Gwen turned to cover the sides of the room. Tosh screamed as she saw Jack. Owen turned. ‘Oh Jesus Fucking Christ!’  
‘Get me off!’ Ianto shouted. ‘Get me off of this bloody wall.’  
The others were staring at Jack in absolute horror. Ianto knew how they felt. He was suddenly horribly afraid he was going to faint before they got the nails out. ‘Please,’ he said. The tears he’d held back for so long escaped him. ‘Please get me down.’  
Gwen grabbed him around the middle, pushing him back against the wall and taking his weight. ‘Bolt cutters,’ she ordered. Tosh shook herself and took off at a run. Owen was crouching by Jack. ‘It’s all right sweetheart,’ Gwen told him. ‘We’re here now. I’ve got you. Everything is going to be fine.’  
Ianto very much doubted that. ‘Are they gone?’  
‘Seem to be yeah.’ Gwen dropped to her knees letting Ianto rest across her shoulders, holding him tightly around his thighs and taking the weight off his tortured legs. Instantly his legs started to spasm. He cried out. It was too much, the pain and horror catching up with him. He was losing it. Gwen hugged him. ‘There was a massive rift spike from here just as we arrived and the alien life signs disappeared.’ Tosh hurried back in lugging the bolt cutters and the large medical kit. Owen hurried over and took the cutters. ‘Alright Teaboy. Let’s get you down.’  
‘Cut it,’ Ianto yelled. ‘Just fucking cut it.’  
‘I will.’ Owen grimaced. ‘It’s going to hurt though.’ He shoved the cutters between Ianto’s wrist and the wall. ‘Just hope this metal is something we can cut.’  
‘It is,’ Tosh told him pointing her scanner at it. ‘Ordinary mild tensile steel. There’s something else in it but nothing that will make it hard to cut.’  
‘Thank Christ for that,’ Owen grunted as he heaved on the cutters. Suddenly Ianto’s arm was free and Ianto collapsed across Gwen. ‘Other one.’ Access was awkward on this side because of the corner of the wall and it took Owen three goes to cut him free. Ianto collapsed to the floor, arms clasped tightly to his chest, the spikes still poking out of his wrists. Gwen pulled him into a hug while Owen gave him a quick look over. He was trembling violently. ‘Pull them out,’ Ianto moaned. ‘Please. Just pull them out.’  
‘Hell no!’ Owen restrained Ianto’s right hand where he was plucking at the spike in his left wrist. ‘We have no idea what structures have been hit. Pull that out here and you might bleed out before I can do anything.’ He shone his torch in his eyes. ‘You seem all right otherwise. Leave it till we get back to the hub. Okay?’  
Reluctantly Ianto nodded.  
‘Good. Now let’s get Jack.’  
Jack flinched as they touched him. He was still conscious. ‘Oh God,’ Owen muttered. ‘It’s all right Jack,’ he soothed automatically even thought he was fairly sure Jack couldn’t hear him. He tried to convey reassurance as he clasped his shoulder. Tosh had already grabbed the bolt cutters but came to a halt at Jack’s mangled wrist. ‘Just do it Tosh.’ She took a deep breath and forced the cutters between his wall and his arm. He jerked. She cut. Jack’s arm came free and Tosh breathed a huge sigh.  
‘I know what we need to do,’ Ianto said blearily from his place on the floor. Gwen tried to shush him. ‘No!’ He forced himself to sit up. ‘It’s going to kill him to take that off. You’re not going to be able to get those things out. For God’s sake you can’t let him come back to life before they’re completely gone.’ He had to take some deep breaths, nearly sick again. Tosh managed to cut the spike on Jack’s other arm. ‘It’s going to be really messy,’ Ianto continued. ‘Get a drip in him and keep him alive. Drug him with painkillers and sedatives and knock him out, then take him back to the hub and do it there. So he can’t feel anything.’  
‘Yeah,’ Owen agreed. ‘Makes sense.’  
Tosh was waving her scanner as Owen worked to get an IV into Jack. Obviously he couldn’t put one in his lower arms. ‘Oh no,’ she moaned. Everyone looked at her expectantly. She turned to face them, indicated the macabre mind probe. ‘This isn’t any mild tensile steel. We’re not going to be able to cut this stuff. I’ve no idea what it is but the molecular structure is extremely dense.’  
‘Fucking brilliant,’ Owen muttered. He sagged. ‘Ianto’s right, we’re going to have to kill him to get it off.’


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now

Now  
Jack had managed to pull himself together enough to get Gwen to leave him. It wasn’t like he was really going to let her into the shower with him to wash his back no matter how much they joked about it. Now however, he needed some time alone. He gave himself ten minutes, fifteen at the most to just react and then he had to pull himself together and get back out there and sort this out.   
So he leant on the ancient tiles of the shower stall and shook. He tried to hold back the tears, scared if he started with that that he wouldn’t be able to stop but he couldn’t stop the trembling as his body reacted to his distress.   
He couldn’t believe all the things that had happened tonight. He wasn’t sure what was the most upsetting; his emotions were being tugged in all directions. Ianto was alive. That was the good news. That was unbelievably good news! He still didn’t know how. He’d known as soon as the Flyers spiked them that Ianto was dead. The spikes were unbelievably cruel. They were awful and painful restraints but their worst attribute was that when they were removed from flesh they released lethal toxins. Spike victims died. Jack had known of people choosing to amputate their limbs or even to live spiked rather than remove them. So when he’d revived… Jack gave a choked sob and lifted his face up into the water. He was sure Ianto had to be dead. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered to whatever gods may exist.  
With shaking hands he fumbled shampoo into his hair and watched the bloodstains swirl down the drain. He was fairly sure Owen must have had to crush his skull to remove the neuro-extrapolator. He shuddered and tamped down on nausea. The nausea might mean more than shock, he possibly still had some Flyer venom in his system. He scrubbed at his scalp, trying to get all traces of gore out of his hair. Flyers! Fucking Flyers. Here on Earth. Here for him! What the hell did those truly awful things want with him? Had they got what they wanted from their brutal mind fuck? Jack had no way of knowing. Were they coming back?  
Jack didn’t think he’d ever felt quite as unnerved at the thought of any aliens as he did about Flyers. These were the creatures that had destroyed his family and his world. And they’d come here. And they’d nearly taken Ianto. He gave a great gasp. He was so close to being sick and fought it back, breathing hard. He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t do this again. He felt cold in spite of the hot water cascading over him. He scrubbed his hands across his face. He had to do this. He had to keep the people he loved safe.  
The people he loved. Scrunching his eyes tight Jack remembered the other big shock on reviving. Lyndel.   
His daughter Lyndel, but not as he remembered her. He’d never forgotten Lyndel, how could he, she was his precious daughter, but he hadn’t been prepared for her to be here when he revived from a death caused by Flyers. He hadn’t expected her to be here, ever. He wasn’t prepared for her to be forty three years old and an Admiral in the Intelligence Agency.   
It was disturbing and finding his daughter disturbing was actually disturbing in itself. She’d been fourteen years old the last time he’d seen her in person. He’d had a holographic message from her when she was sixteen that he’d treasured and played over and over. He wanted to hold her, treasure her, love her as the child she’d been. He had no idea what to do with this mature and competent woman. He had a feeling however that she was going to tell him.  
Jack wanted nothing more than to collapse in a heap. It was actually taking him a conscious effort not to. Lyndel, the Flyers, the neuro-extrapolator and torture and pain and Ianto who should be dead but wasn’t. There was a lot to process and he wasn’t sure if he was up to it.  
He had to be.  
He had to be, he had to be.  
Swallowing hard against the nausea and residual pain of his resurrection he finished washing and turned off the shower. He grabbed a towel. He had to go and be Captain Jack Harkness. He had to look after his team, check on Ianto, find out what an Intelligence Agency Admiral wanted with Torchwood and make damn sure that Flyers never came near him or his team ever again. He snagged a deep blue shirt, the one he was wearing when he sent his last message home. His mother thought he looked handsome in blue. Deal with it all he thought, as he straightened his collar and ran a comb through his hair, then hopefully there would be time to catch up and he could, just for a short time, be a parent again.  
Lyndel. A small warm spot in his chest blossomed and he smiled. Dear Gods but she’d grown up to be so beautiful.  
Twtwtwtw  
Owen and Tosh were in the med bay with Ianto. Ianto was curled up on the autopsy table wrapped tightly in a blanket, his eyes shut. He was as pale as low fat milk. Owen was staring at the heart monitor and muttering to himself as he made calculations on a pad. Tosh was proving herself to be an able medical technician, replacing an IV bag. Jack felt a warm appreciation for his team. God he had to make time for them too. There was no way they could have removed that probe without crushing his skull. He wasn’t the only one having a rough day.  
Swallowing a lump in his throat he made his way down the stairs and went straight to Ianto. He’d thought he was sleeping but when he put a hand on his head his eyes flickered open, his blue eyes slightly spacey. ‘Hey,’ Jack said softly, teary, still not quite prepared to believe that the crisis was over and the venom wasn’t going to get him. He pulled up a chair and sat beside the table. Burrowing into the blanket he found Ianto’s cold hands and clasped them between his own. He could feel the bandages on his wrists. Ianto’s fingers twitched slightly and his mouth quirked in an attempt at a smile. Jack bent and gave him a soft kiss on the lips.  
‘Easy Harkness,’ Owen told him, but there was a smile in his voice. ‘You treat him very carefully right now. Don’t do anything to upset that heart beat.’  
‘How did you do it?’ Jack asked. ‘How did you save him? I’ve never seen anyone survive Flyer venom?’  
‘Your daughter knew what to do,’ Tosh told him. ‘She arrived just as Ianto started to convulse. She seemed to know exactly what was wrong and told us what to do.’  
Now that was odd.   
‘How?’  
‘We stopped his heart,’ Owen said with a grin. Ianto’s face took on a pained expression and Jack placed a protective hand on his head. ‘We used potassium. Lyndel says that it neutralises the venom. Certainly seems to. The only trouble is it needs to be in the victim’s system about five minutes and as soon as you inject it you stop their heart. Bringing him back was a bit tricky.’ Owen’s voice held entirely too much relish to Jack’s way of thinking. ‘We had to kill him, resuscitate him and kill him a few times, to make sure the stuff had been active long enough.’ Owen gave a blissful sigh. ‘It was pretty amazing.’  
Tosh put a hand quietly on Jack’s shoulder and he was grateful for it.  
Owen’s eyes were shining. ‘Your daughter is pretty amazing too.’  
‘Where is she?’  
‘Gwen took her off for a quick tour of the Hub and then they were going to go and get the bed ready in the time out room.’  
Jack nodded. ‘And Ianto will be all right?’ he asked.  
‘Yes,’ Owen said with perfect conviction. ‘His whole body is weak obviously and his heart took a hell of a hammering. I’m still working on getting his heart rhythm sorted but he’s young and strong so he should be fine. I don’t know how long it will take him to recover, Lyndel wasn’t sure on that. Doesn’t help that some ribs got broken when we were doing CPR, but you’ll have him back bossing you around soon, no worries.’ Owen gave a filthy grin. ‘No sex for a while though Jack, you going to be able to cope? No exertion at all until his heart’s recovered.’  
Jack was saved from answering when he realised he was being watched. Gwen and Lyndel stood at the top of the bay looking down. Lyndel smiled and Jack couldn’t help it, he beamed at her. She was extraordinarily beautiful. He didn’t notice Gwen and Owen’s grins as they took in Jack and Lyndel’s identical smiles. Tosh noticed a little sourly that Owen’s smile was particularly wide as well. And then Lyndel’s smile dropped into a serious mask. It was the look Jack used on police officers and politicians and the team all recognised it. Jack however obviously didn’t and his face dropped.  
‘Captain Harkness,’ his daughter said formally. ‘I understand that is the name you are using at this time?’ Jack nodded. ‘I need to speak with you on a matter of significance to the Greater Human Empire. As you are a former Time Agent I have the complete authority of All Agencies to compel your co-operation in this matter. While I acknowledge that you are my parent and it is indeed wonderful to see you again,’ there was the vaguest hint of warmth in her voice, ‘I’m afraid there won’t be time at the moment for any informal intercourse.’ She fixed him with a steely blue gaze. ‘May we speak in your office?’  
This crisp professional was not his Lyndel. ‘No,’ Jack said, ‘Admiral.’ He pulled on his “I’m the boss,” personae. ‘I don’t know why you’re here, but as you can obviously time travel at will and you’ve never come to see me before, I’d already worked out that this wasn’t a social call. However I think you will find that I don’t take well to being told what to do and that the Agency, any branch of the Agency, does not yet have any authority over Earth.’   
He turned back to the gurney, checking with Owen who nodded and started gathering Ianto in his arms. Tosh disconnected the heart monitor and collected the IV bag. ‘I will see my colleague settled and I’ll speak to you when I’m ready.’  
Lyndel raised an eyebrow in a look that was more reminiscent of Ianto than Jack. She didn’t speak, just stood back to let them past. ‘Since when did Intelligence Agents get Time Agent wrist straps?’ Jack hissed when he realised she was following along behind them.  
‘Just think of me as a special case.’  
Jack was finding Ianto’s limp body rather difficult to hang on to but the Hub wasn’t designed to allow things like gurneys or even stretchers to be manoeuvred through the twists and turns. He was heading for the new time out room that had been part of the redevelopment that the team had done while he was away with the Doctor. He stopped at the sofa and rested Ianto down on it for a moment. It would have been a lot easier if he could have simply thrown him over his shoulder but with broken ribs that obviously wasn’t a good idea. Owen hurried up and checked his patient’s pulse. ‘He’s okay,’ he said.  
There had once been three time out rooms, all with the look and ambience of Victorian police cells. They hadn’t been used in years. But while Jack was away walls had been removed and a plumber brought in and now there was one large airy room with a nice ensuite bathroom. Other than the fact that it had no windows it could have been a room in any medium to high price range hotel. Ianto was the only one of the team that had even realised that it was actually on the same level and directly adjacent to Jack’s bunker. In fact he’d laughingly told Jack when a gobsmacked Jack had first seen the room; it had been hellishly difficult to stop them finding the hidden door between the two.   
Jack had been gobsmacked because on his first night back he’d gone to leave his room by his usual secret entrance only to fetch up in a totally unfamiliar yellow toned room containing a king sized bed which itself contained Ianto.   
Ianto had of course decided to spend the night there for that very reason.   
Ianto had taken charge of the painting of the room, doing most of the work himself. He was frightened to let anyone else do it, he said, because the catch on the hidden door had become looser rather than stiffer over the years. The door opened inwards into Jack’s room and it would have been very easy for someone simply to lean on the wrong piece of wall and suddenly find themselves in Jack’s bunker. Ianto now had a chest of drawers strategically placed so that this couldn’t happen but had left enough room for Jack to get out around it. It was a quick route from here to the carpark exit and Jack often used it. Jack’s room however was private and no-one else needed to know there was any other entrance other than the manhole in his office.  
Ianto had been very surprised that no-one had queried the availability of the plumbing when they had the ensuite put in. He’d been prepared to tell them that they were adjacent to Jack’s room; after all it was no secret that he had his own bathroom, but it never came up so he didn’t mention it.  
Smiling slightly as he remembered Ianto’s tales of setting up the room and the pleasures they’d had christening it, Jack tucked the blanket that had slid off back around his lover and pulled him back in against his chest. Surprisingly this time Lyndel came to stand in front of him, linking her arms with his and taking some of the weight. He nodded his thanks. This was more the Lyndel he remembered. The woman was full of contradictions and he couldn’t work her out.  
They made their way down the passageway and through the door beside the new conference room, something else that had happened while he was away. The bed was turned down and he eased Ianto onto it, noting with surprise that Gwen was seated at the computer terminal on the other side of the room. The electric blanket was on and the bed felt cosy. He removed the rather dingy blanket wrapped around the patient and tidied the hospital gown he was dressed in. He’d find him his pyjamas later. Ianto’s eyes were flickering but he couldn’t hold them open as Lyndel pulled up the duvet. Tosh hung the IV bag on a waiting stand and Owen bustled in with an oxygen bottle and portable heart rate monitor. Jack stepped back to let him work.  
‘Captain,’ Lyndel said quietly. ‘We have to talk.’  
Jack realised he couldn’t just keep telling her “Later”.  
‘Jack,’ Gwen called out. She was typing furiously, bringing up various screens. ‘We’ve got some sort of incursion; I don’t know what it is.’  
‘What?’ Tosh was instantly at her side peering at the screen. ‘Let me look.’  
Gwen moved back as Tosh started work. ‘She’s right Jack,’ she said a little oddly. ‘Something seems to be trying to gain entrance. Not sure what it is. Not human. We need to go into lock down until we work out what it is.’  
‘Is there a threat to us or the city?’  
‘I think the city’s all right,’ Tosh told him. She seemed a little confused.   
‘It’s here we need to worry about,’ Gwen said.  
‘Jack?’ Tosh asked. ‘Do we lock down?’  
Jack tried to think but the day’s events seemed to have slowed his brain. Something really odd was happening. It was like he had to process everything twice. ‘If we go into lock down it will take us at least half an hour to reverse it if we have to leave. Owen,’ he turned to the medic, ‘Is Ianto likely to need emergency treatment where we’d have to get him out instantly?’   
‘Damn,’ Gwen muttered, ‘I didn’t think of that?’  
Owen was staring at his monitors.   
‘Owen?’  
Owen finally answered slowly. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘He seems stable right now. We’ve got him this far and we have most of everything we might need right here.’ He straightened and looked Jack in the eye. ‘I can look after him here. Do what you need to do.’  
‘Tosh, what’s happening?’  
‘It seems to be pinging our defence mechanisms, trying to access any weak points.’  
‘And you’ve no idea what it is?’  
‘Not at this stage.’  
Jack took a deep breath. ‘Okay. Lock down. Now.’  
Tosh hit a sequence of keys, the lights flickered and dimmed. Graunching noises could be heard as shields moved and huge locks engaged. The stood there and looked at each other. Jack’s heart was racing.  
Incongruously the women started to laugh. Lyndel moved towards Gwen and to Jack’s bemusement they high fived. ‘Did I do it right,’ Lyndel asked, indicating her hand. ‘That is what you do in this time isn’t it?’  
‘You did it just fine,’ Gwen told her matching her grin. They high fived again.  
‘Oh you madam,’ Lyndel laughed, ‘were superb.’  
‘What’s going on here?’ Owen asked in confusion.  
‘I’ll second that,’ Jack muttered. ‘Tosh what are our visitors doing now?’  
Tosh looked contrite. ‘I’m sorry Jack, there aren’t any visitors.’ She turned the screen to show him a document file. It said, Trust me Tosh. Pretend we’re under threat. We have to go into lock down so that Lyndel can tell us why she’s really here. Her brainwaves are being monitored and she needs our shields so she can talk. I trust her. Gwen.  
‘What?’ But then he felt something in his mind. It was soft and so familiar it almost made him cry. He turned to Lyndel gazing in wonder. It had been so long, so very long, he’d completely forgotten. “Hello Lee,” her essence said in his head. A feeling of warmth enveloped him. “I have missed you so much.” His own love and longing mingled with hers and she fell into his arms. He held her tight burying his nose in her hair. He’d forgotten what she smelt like. She was at once both achingly familiar and completely foreign. It had been so very long and she both was and wasn’t his little girl anymore. Now he realised what had seemed wrong with Lyndel. In this time and place he was so used to not using empathic communication that he hadn’t even noticed it was missing but he and Lyndel had always had an empathic bond. She’d locked it off until now.  
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. He realised she had said it out loud. ‘I’m being monitored. My brain waves are being scanned. On our tour through your marvellous facility,’ and her eyes twinkled, ‘Gwen took me deep enough for me to be able to risk telling her. We worked out a way to get your shields deployed without alerting the suspicions of those observing me. Thank god you’ve got empathic shielding as well as everything else.’ She pulled away and looked at him. They were the same height now and her gaze was very direct. ‘This really isn’t a social call and you really aren’t going to like my orders.’ Jack led her over to the rather lovely new corner couch and sat her down. She sank into it with a sigh and closed her eyes. He kept hold of her hand. ‘This is wonderful,’ she murmured. ‘It is exhausting screening my thoughts for any length of time.’  
Owen looked at her curiously. ‘How can that even be done?’  
Her mouth quirked into a grin. ‘It isn’t easy.’  
No, it certainly wasn’t, Jack knew. He could screen his thoughts so that they couldn’t be read, but he couldn’t hold his thoughts to a script, allowing them to be read while keeping his real ones hidden. This was what Lyndel appeared to have been doing. It made her rather schizophrenic seeming personality make sense. ‘What is happening?’ he asked. ‘Why are you here?’  
She opened her eyes and smiled at him. He’d forgotten how startlingly blue her eyes were. ‘Well, because we know we can’t kill you, I’m here to take you back and incarcerate you until the year 5098.’ She gave a snort at the startled look on his face. ‘For your own protection and for the good of the human race, of course.’  
Jack so wished Ianto had been awake to hear that. He would have given such a pretty roll of his eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyndel's mission is revealed

Jack sighed, tired and worried. His resurrection headache hadn’t gone away yet either, in fact it seemed to be getting worse. Something odd seemed to be happening in his brain. It was a neuronal equivalent of double vision, his thoughts stuttered, like he’d already had them before he’d thought them. Extreme de ja vu. He probably did have Flyer venom in his system.  
‘Of course,’ Lyndel said, ‘the other option is to take you past the year 5098, but either way, you can’t be anywhen before that time.’ She tightened the grip on his hand.   
‘No!’ Jack ripped his hand away. ‘I belong here now. I’m not leaving my team.’  
‘I knew you wouldn’t like it but you have to. For the greater good of the human race.’  
‘Bullshit.’ He grimaced as the pain in his head racked up a notch. Maybe he shouldn’t have shouted. There was something off. He felt Owen’s hand light on his shoulder but kept his focus on Lyndel. ‘How does ripping me three thousand years into the future help the human race?’  
She looked at him. ‘Head ache?’ she asked in a tone reminiscent of his mother.   
He felt her reach out inside his head. Automatically Jack relaxed slightly. His mother had been able to do this too. ‘Yes.’   
He felt tendrils of warmth seep into his head. ‘Let me?’ she asked. ‘I’m good at this.’  
Jack had been going to agree but before he’d even thought yes or no his brain was being filled with a viscous fog. It wasn’t the cool soothing sensation he was expecting. His eyes shut as his higher functions slowed. This was different. As his body went limp he was aware, vaguely of Owen making a startled sound, but it was so far away. All the tension, all the worry, all the pain dampened. It was like his brain had been encased in dough. He floated in a warm ocean but even as he sank into it, he recognised it for what it was, an immobilisation of sorts. Wrong, the small functioning part of his cortex twinged. It shouldn’t feel like this. He shouldn’t be paralysed. He fought to get out of it. He was trying to think with treacle forced into his synapses, electrical impulses slowed. It would have been so comfortable to sink into it, allow the pain to flow away and yet he retained just enough sense to realise that he had been invaded and it was wrong. His trust had been betrayed. He tried to gather his long unused psychic defences and force Lyndel and her soothing and tempting invasion out of his head.  
Somewhere he was aware that Owen was shaking him, calling his name. JackJackJack. The sound reverberated on the inside but it came from outside his head, gave him a boundary to work towards. JackJackJack. A stinging slap on his cheek provided the focus he needed. He concentrated on the sting, found his outside and worked back in. He identified his boundaries and pushed electrical energy through his frontal lobes, sweeping backwards, cleaning impurities out. Prickles of pain blossomed inside his head as synapses sparked and pulsed, repelling the invading paralysis. The prickles joined, became stabs, became agonising waves as he pushed her influence out of his brain. The pain suddenly pulsed through his skull, much stronger, much worse than it had been prior to whatever she’d done, but she was gone from his head and he was back. He screamed, and found himself on his hands and knees on the floor.  
Nausea crashed through him and he threw up, his head exploding with pain. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the seams of his skull had blown apart and he died from it, but he didn’t. His thought processes were his own again and when he could finally look up he was gratified to see that both Tosh and Gwen had their guns trained on his daughter. Owen was beside him looking worried and stopping him from pitching head first into the mess on the floor. Jack panted, head hanging, catching his breath, trying to ignore a headache that was of quite epic proportions. Fuck, he hadn’t had to beat a mind meld like that for over a hundred years.   
Owen wiped his face, caught the string of drool hanging off his lip and helped him to gingerly move away from the puddle of bile. Jack sat, rather abruptly on the floor. He leaned weakly back against the couch. ‘It’s all right Jack. Take your time.’ Owen glared at Lyndel. ‘It even looks like she’s mucking with you again Gwen is going to shoot her in the foot. I’d like to see her try whatever that was with a slug through her boot.’ He ran his scanner over Jack and narrowed his eyes. He put a hand gently to Jack’s temple, his fingers cool and comforting. ‘I don’t know what happened but your brain is actually swollen.’ Jack concentrated on just breathing.  
The silence stretched out. No one seemed to know what to say. Jack worked on getting his body back under his control. Lyndel sat on the couch watching him, her face a familiar mask he often saw in his own mirror. Eventually Jack cracked. ‘Why did you do that?’ His voice was hoarse. He wondered how long he’d been screaming.  
‘I was taking away your pain.’  
‘Don’t bullshit me,’ Jack snapped. This woman with her oh so familiar face was a total stranger to him but he still knew her on so many levels. Disconcerted didn’t begin to cover how he was feeling.   
‘Well it wouldn’t have hurt if you didn’t fight it.’  
‘You didn’t let me out when I struggled. That’s not healing. Did they teach you that in the Intelligence Agency?’ He was so angry. She was an Admiral in the Intelligence Agency; the one Agency that no-one messed with. The Agency staffed by geeky misfits and true psychopaths. What had happened to his Lyndel that she had become one of those? She had Lyndel’s face and so he’d automatically been disposed to trust her. She was fifty percent her useless selfish father and most of her life he had tended to forget that. Just for a moment he entertained the idea that she wasn’t really his daughter, but he knew that was foolish. It was her all right. ‘That wasn’t a healing, that was an immobilisation.’ Suddenly knew what she’d been going to do. ‘Gwen, take her wrist strap.’  
Lyndel’s eyes widened. So did Gwen’s but she asked no questions and moved forward. Jack was grateful for that. ‘Keep your gun on her and don’t let her touch that strap.’  
He blinked, trying to quell the tears that threatened. ‘All you had to do was hold my hand, touch me somewhere and poof, we’d have been out of here.’ He swallowed down the lump. ‘You weren’t even going to give me a choice.’  
‘There is no choice.’ Her voice was like ice.  
Jack forced himself to ignore the pain and think. ‘Right, let’s get a few things straight shall we? Is there really anyone monitoring your thoughts?’  
Lyndel looked smug. ‘No.’  
‘Thank you. Tosh, reverse the lockdown.’  
‘You might not want to do that.’ She gave him another of his mother’s looks. The “I’m mother and I know best look.” The one that said “because I’m mother that’s why.” ‘The Flyers may well be back.’  
Tosh looked up. ‘Flyers? The creatures that had Jack and Ianto earlier this evening?’  
Gwen was thoroughly pissed off. ‘Why not just say that? Why make up a story like that?’ She dropped the wrist strap in Jack’s lap. ‘I trusted you,’ she said to Lyndel. Her gun didn’t waver.  
‘And that was the point.’ The wrist strap was warm with the body heat of its wearer. Jack stroked it. Wrist straps were so much more than tools; the leather was far from practical and was symbolic of life, history and tradition. This one belonged to his daughter. His daughter that he hadn’t expected to see again for three thousand years, the one he’d never forgotten. The daughter he loved. The daughter who had used complex mind control to try and kidnap him.  
‘Lesson number one,’ Owen muttered under his breath. ‘Never trust anyone from Jack’s future past.’  
Sighing Jack struggled up and got himself back on the couch. His head felt like it was about to come off his shoulders but he couldn’t give in to things yet. He leant back, turned sideways so he could watch his beautiful and dangerous daughter. He needed to hear her reasons. She had saved Ianto from certain death after all. She hadn’t had to do that. He glanced across at the bed but all he could see of Ianto was the top of his head, the covers pulled up and tucked around him. He was out cold but the heart monitor showed a normal rhythm. He was simply asleep, healing.  
He closed his eyes and ground his fingers into his temples. ‘Talk,’ he gritted out. He felt Owen’s hand on his wrist, taking his pulse, then opened his eyes in surprise as his sleeve was pushed up. Before he could blink Owen had stabbed a hypodermic into his bicep and he gave a small squawk of surprise.  
‘Morphine,’ Owen told him. ‘Figured you could use it. Not enough to knock you out; should just take the edge off things. Plus an anti emetic. It will take a few minutes to work though.’  
‘Thank you.’ He turned back to Lyndel. ‘Talk.’  
She glanced down at the puddle of vomit on the carpet, she didn’t like it, but he couldn’t tell if it was simply the vomit itself that upset her or her part in making him sick. Then she glared at him and it hurt him to see in her the small girl she used to be. That was the look she’d given him on being sent to bed early for sneaking out to play with friends when she should have been home doing chores.  
‘5098?’ he prompted.  
She sighed and seemed as if they were going to have a stand-off. There was that ten year old again. He was nearly derailed. Shielding himself like mad he didn’t know if she were acting or genuine. He had to get on top of this conversation. ‘You can spend some time in a cell if you’d prefer. We have an interrogation suite too. You know I’m sure, if you’ve been reading up on me, that I’m very good at interrogation.’  
‘You couldn’t make yourself do that to me.’  
‘You’re right,’ Jack said matching her tone. ‘I couldn’t. And while it would absolutely destroy me to let it happen,’ his voice was very bleak, ‘I could allow someone I’d trained to do it for me.’ He nodded towards Owen. And that was a big heartbreaking case of double dare, but none of his team broke.   
Owen had showed a not completely surprising aptitude to torture. The Hippocratic oath could be broken for the greater good. He felt Lyndel’s mind try to edge its way back in to his, but he was prepared now and repelled it. She must have tried it on his team too and they wouldn’t have been able to resist. Sadly, they all believed him capable of carrying out that threat, they’d seen him threaten to execute Ianto after all. He had executed Mary right in front of them. Owen knew he would be able to extract information from Lyndel and he had no emotional involvement with her. His team believed the threat so Lyndel did too. She gave in.  
‘In 5064,’ she said quietly, ‘you discovered a way to defeat Flyers in battle.’ She gave a sad smile when Jack gasped. ‘The Flyers can’t work out how it’s done but over forty years later, the time I’m in now, they’re nearly completely wiped out, the whole species just about gone. The whole of the human race, plus several others owe you a huge debt. However, just when we thought we could relax, stop worrying about Flyers, whatever they have that passes for an intelligence agency discovered that it was you who figured it out. They need to know what you know, how you learnt what you did to exploit their weak point. They set out to track you down.’ She grimaced and gestured towards the still figure on the bed. ‘I was just a bit late. Last night they found you.’  
The pain was easing now but Jack was finding it really hard to think. ‘No that’s wrong. In 5064 I was still with the Time Agency. I didn’t do anything like that. Are we talking about something I’m going to do? Because if I’m going to discover this, I do need to be around for the lead up, don’t I? Otherwise I’ll never work it out.’  
‘No Lee, ah Jack. You already worked it out.’  
Oh shit. In spite of Owen’s anti emetic injection his stomach lurched. Lyndel watched him with a small smile on her face as he made the connections. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her. ‘One day in 5066,’ he was speaking to his daughter now, not the Admiral, ‘when you were sixteen years old I woke up with my mind wiped of two years worth of memories? That was it?’ He heard his voice rise in pitch but couldn’t stop it. ‘That was why?’ He felt his team gather behind him. They knew the story. He thought he’d done something appalling, had been so ashamed, was so angry with the agency for wiping two years from his life and two years from his time with his daughter that he’d left the agency and turned rogue. Someone had a hand on his shoulder. He hadn’t gone back to see his family because he thought he had a price on his head. He’d never seen his mother again. He hadn’t seen Lyndel… until now. He felt like he’d just plummeted down the rabbit hole.  
Lyndel nodded. ‘You were a hero. You should have been fettered and praised. Instead they had to make you run, disappear. The Flyers couldn’t be allowed to get to you. So they cooked up a plan to piss you off enough that you’d leave on your own and cover your traces. It was that or kill you outright.’ She gave a wry grin. ‘You obliged in spectacular fashion. It took us years to find you. I’ve seen the records of some of what you got up to. You were very inventive.’  
‘Thanks,’ Jack said drily. The strange de ja vu was back. He’d felt something like it before.  
‘To their credit,’ she continued although Jack couldn’t see any credit in what the Time Agency had done, ‘they imagined in a few years the war would be over and that after a few years of running amuck in out of the way places you’d get bored and come back, they could make things right. At least that’s what they’ve told me, but they know we’re related. No one ever dreamed it would take this long to get on top of the slimy bastards. But now, when we thought we had them on the run they turn around and discover temporal displacement and suddenly they can go anywhere and anywhen they want to.’ She let out a snort. ‘And here we all are.’  
Jack wondered if he were going into shock. He didn’t feel he was quite here, or he was here twice, he wasn’t quite sure. ‘But I had a mind wipe. Those two years are completely gone.’ Jack couldn’t hold back the shudder. It was only a few hours ago that the Flyer’s dreadful mind probe had worked its way physically into his brain. ‘I don’t think they could get anything from me.’  
‘The combined Agencies have decided that we can’t risk them finding a way of reversing the wipe. The decision was made to bring you in. We did hope to do it before they found you. Obviously.’  
‘Oh obviously.’ Suddenly it was all too much. He sighed deeply, incredibly fatigued. He was still in pain, his brain was cross wired. He felt ill. He nodded at Gwen. ‘It’s nearly five am. Take the Admiral down to the cells. Give her a blanket and a pillow, something to eat. Don’t talk to her, don’t trust her and don’t let her touch you. If you feel a niggling from your conscience as you go to do something, stop and take notice. It’s probably because you’re about to do something you know you shouldn’t and you’re under the influence of foreign mind control. It’s a classic symptom.’ He made sure to look deeply into Gwen’s eyes. ‘Do you understand me?’  
Gwen looked a little confused. ‘I think so. You’re saying that if Lyndel tries to make me do something I shouldn’t…’  
‘Like not locking the cell door,’ Tosh suggested.  
Gwen nodded in agreement, ‘then I should have some clue that this isn’t actually my idea because?’  
‘You’ll feel some niggle telling you not to do it,’ Jack completed for her.  
‘So I was under mind control each time I used to get smashed at the pub,’ Owen muttered. Tosh snickered.  
‘Quite likely.’   
‘It’s all right,’ Tosh told Gwen. ‘Keep your com open and I’ll monitor you all the way there and back.’  
‘You’re over reacting,’ Lyndel protested.  
‘Not really.’ Jack tried to keep a bored look on his face. ‘You attempted to immobilise and kidnap me. If anything I’m treating you very lightly.’ He suppressed a shudder of horror. If he hadn’t been able to fight back and more importantly if his team hadn’t been on the alert and stopped her from touching him he would be three thousand years from here right now, and probably with very little chance of getting back. ‘What happened to you?’ he asked sadly. He just had to know.  
‘What do you mean?’  
‘He means you’re a callous bitch,’ Owen said coldly. ‘The Lyndel Jack’s told us about wouldn’t do what you tried to do tonight. For god sake, he’s your father.’  
‘Mother,’ Lyndel corrected. ‘He’s my mother.’  
‘All right, we know that. He’s your parent. He loves you and look what you’ve done to him.’ Owen was pointing both hands at him, exhibit A. ‘He’s in pain. You’ve hurt him.’  
‘I hurt him.’ Lyndel’s voice became shriller. ‘How do you think my childhood went? It was bad enough growing up with everyone thinking that the person who gave birth to me was my father…’   
Jack’s felt his stomach drop. What the hell had happened? He’d done everything in his power to give Lyndel a happy childhood. He was a child himself, only sixteen years old and so traumatised by war and the manner of her birth. He’d tried so hard, him and his mother. He thought they’d succeeded. He didn’t remember Lyndel wanting for anything. He remembered happy times. Why didn’t she? He must have gasped because the others all turned to look at him. On top of everything else she was ripping his heart out. ‘But it was worse than that. He left me.’ She turned to Jack. ‘You left me. You promised you’d come back and you never did.’  
‘But…’ Jack stuttered.  
‘Hang on,’ Gwen bulldozed in. ‘You said yourself, the Time Agency made him run away.’  
There was a glistening of tears in Lyndel’s eyes. ‘But you sent me a message and you promised. You said that one day, in a few years from then you would come back. You promised.’ She sighed sadly. ‘I believed you. You always kept your promises.’  
‘In this message, was I dressed like I am now?’ Jack tried to keep his voice firm.  
Lyndel nodded.  
Jack didn’t understand. ‘Sweetheart I’m still coming. Tosh here sent that message to you about six months ago in linear time. I fully intend to turn up and be part of your life again in about 5066. At this stage it looks as if I’ll have to take the long route but I fully intend to come.’  
‘I’m from 5098,’ Lyndel said coldly. ‘You never came.’  
Jack thought he was going to implode. ‘I…I…’ He seemed to be losing the ability to answer. His headache was phenomenal. He tried to mentally squint, to knit together the double thought processes… He gave a gasp. He knew what that feeling was. Everyone was staring at him again. ‘Can you feel it?’ he asked Lyndel. ‘The duality? Ever since you’ve been here? That’s why my headache’s got worse.’  
‘What?’ all three of the others asked at once.  
‘Gods,’ Lyndel blanched and suddenly looked very unsure of herself. ‘I wasn’t sure,’ she whispered. ‘I have only basic physical temporal training. I’m quite good on the theory but I hadn’t felt it before and I wasn’t sure.’ She looked at Jack, and he was pleased she looked frightened. She’d created a temporal paradox here tonight. Who knew what might happen next.  
‘What the fuck are you on about?’ Owen demanded.  
‘My visit here has created a duality in time,’ Lyndel said sadly. ‘I don’t know what I did to cause it and I certainly didn’t intend to.’  
‘And we don’t know what the outcome will be,’ Jack said quietly.  
‘You’ve changed time?’ Tosh asked excitedly.  
‘Yes.’  
Owen stood, hands on hips, glaring belligerently. ‘And you know this… how?’  
Lyndel nodded at Jack. ‘Lee and I can feel it.’  
‘Massive de ja vu,’ Jack said. ‘With knobs on. Two different versions of events rubbing up against each other and just slightly out of sync but glued together by whatever caused them to spin off. If you are time sensitive you can feel it.’  
‘So what’s going to happen?’ Owen asked.  
‘We can’t tell,’ Lyndel said. ‘My being here has somehow changed something that impacts on the timeline I am part of. I haven’t winked out of existence so that implies I still get born.’  
‘Of course you get born,’ Jack growled. ‘Because that’s already happened in my past.’ He was flagging rapidly. He couldn’t cope with temporal physics right now.   
‘So whatever you’ve changed,’ Gwen mused, ‘it can’t change any of the future that Jack’s already been a part of?’  
‘I suppose.’ Lyndel muttered. ‘But whatever it is could still completely destroy my universe after he left.’  
This was too much right now and anyway, whatever it was, it was already done. There was nothing they could do. ‘I have to sleep,’ Jack admitted, something they’d usually never hear from him. He could barely string a sentence together. ‘Take her to the cells. It’s late. We’ll re evaluate in the morning.’   
Gwen again gestured with her gun and the two women turned to leave the room. Lyndel suddenly pivoted to stare at the bed. ‘Gods! That’s it!’ She flung herself at the bed, grabbing for the IV line and monitor cords as she went soaring across Ianto reaching for his throat.   
All hell broke loose. Gwen and Owen grabbed for her. Ianto woke up screaming. Jack could see his eyes wide with fright and pain. Then Gwen had Lyndel on her knees on the floor, her gun grinding into the back of her skull. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Gwen hissed with that venomous voice that really meant business. Owen, from somewhere produced a set of flexi cuffs.  
Jack was thanking all the gods he knew that Lyndel hadn’t known enough about medical technology in this time period to realise that the monitor and IV weren’t actually keeping Ianto alive. He knew exactly what she was doing. He waited till some of the hubbub quieted down. Tosh had climbed onto the bed and was cradling a confused and frightened Ianto in her arms. ‘It’s Ianto at the heart of the paradox,’ Jack said sadly. He swallowed thickly. He was going to cry. ‘He’s the thing that Lyndel changed. He was supposed to die tonight.’   
‘Lee. You have to…’ Lyndel entreated.  
‘No! I won’t.’ He buried his face in his hands. He might just have changed the rest of Lyndel’s life. He had no way of knowing what the implications of this were. He might have condemned millions of people to death, or to not being born, but he wouldn’t give up Ianto. ‘I won’t do that.’ He couldn’t kill Ianto for a possible future three thousand years from now. He buried his face in his hands.   
‘Get up,’ Gwen ground out. ‘Move.’ She shoved her gun into Lyndel’s face. ‘Don’t you touch him,’ she growled as Lyndel used the edge of the bed to pull herself up. ‘Don’t you even look at him.’  
‘Lee?’ Lyndel asked plaintively.  
Jack couldn’t look at her.  
‘Take her away.’ Owen told Gwen. ‘We’ll work out what to do with her in the morning.’  
As soon as Gwen had ushered Lyndel from the room Jack shut his eyes and sagged on the couch falling slowly sideways. He dug his fingers into his temples. Owen and Tosh were talking quietly over near the bed, getting Ianto sorted, putting the IV back in and reattaching the heart monitor. Jack was shaking with emotion and pain.  
Gwen came back, the conversation around the bed became animated. Then it went quiet.  
The room was very quiet. He’d just about got a handle on things enough to doze off when he felt a touch on his hand. His eyelid was levered open and a light shone in it. He screwed up his face and swore.  
‘Brain swelling seems to be slightly reduced,’ Owen said drily. The girls were gone. ‘Come on Jack, come to bed,’ he sat him up. ‘You’ve had a rough night.’  
Jack snorted and winced as it increased the pressure in his head. ‘Says the man who killed and revived his colleague five times to save him.’ He glanced over at the lump that was Ianto in the bed and swallowed hard, drowning with emotion. ‘And then had to pulverise my skull to remove the flyer mind probe.’ Owen gave him a startled look. ‘Cause I don’t know any other way you could have got that thing off me. I don’t imagine you’ve had an easy night either.’  
Owen stared at him like he was an imbecile. ‘You’re the one with the headache,’ he said mildly. He pulled him forward and helped him stand, the world seriously unsteady. ‘Come on. You’ll be much more comfortable in the bed and I’m sure the poor old tea boy will sleep better with you tucked in next to him.’  
Jack’s legs would barely hold him and he allowed himself to be lead to the bed. He sat on the side opposite Ianto, limp and unresisting as Owen undressed him. It was a relief to relinquish control. Owen pulled back the covers and he lay down with a sigh, turning automatically towards the unresponsive but alive and breathing body on the other side of the bed. Jack moaned, his eyes closing against his will as he wrapped himself carefully around Ianto. He might have dreamed it but he thought he felt a hand caress his cheek.


	5. Chapter 5

Jack woke later to the sound of whispered voices. Spooned around Ianto he jerked and held tighter when he felt someone else climb onto the bed. ‘Shh,’ Tosh’s voice soothed. ‘It’s all right Jack.’ She placed a hand over his. ‘Let go of Ianto for a minute.’  
‘Huh?’ He looked up. The light in the room was dim but he knew instinctively that it was actually nine past nine in the morning. Jack always knew what the time was. The awful déjà vu sensation had stopped, there was only one time happening now. Whatever potentiality had been in existence before had resolved into one stable timeline. He had no idea if it was the correct timeline or not but Ianto was alive and spooned in his arms and that made it the right one in Jack’s mind.  
‘Jack, let him go. We need to turn Ianto over,’ Owen prised his arm away from Ianto’s chest. ‘With broken ribs and doped up like this he’s a sitter for pneumonia if he doesn’t get turned.’ He edged his hands under Ianto’s body. ‘You two have been lying like that for hours now, we didn’t want to disturb you, but we really need to do this.’  
Jack wriggled, trying to get into a position to help but his reactions were slow. ‘It’s okay Jack,’ Tosh said. ‘We can do it.’ She was beside Owen, one knee up on the bed to gain leverage as she worked her hands under Ianto’s bottom.   
‘Ianto mate,’ Owen called in Ianto’s ear. ‘Can you hear me? You’re doing good. We’re just going to turn you over now.’   
Ianto groaned slightly, a sound that pleased Jack no end.  
‘Okay, on three,’ Owen instructed. ‘One, two, three.’ And Ianto was expertly and gently flipped to face Jack. His eyes flew open. ‘Ow!’   
‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ Owen soothed as Jack reached out and pulled Ianto back in against him. Ianto buried his head against Jack’s chest. Jack rubbed his chin over the top of his head and made soothing noises. He could feel him relaxing again. Owen swapped the oxygen mask for a nasal canulla which he fixed around Ianto’s ears. ‘Ianto, do you need to pee? I’m running this IV fast.’ But Ianto had gone back to sleep.   
Owen looked at Tosh. ‘Might be a good idea to put a nappy on him.’ Moments later Ianto was tucked into incontinent pants and Owen had taken vitals and run his scanner over both of them. ‘Go back to sleep Jack.’  
‘Is everything all right?’ Jack asked tiredly. He could get up if he had to. His headache had gone. He just felt completely wrung out.  
‘Everything is fine,’ Owen said.   
Jack didn’t believe him. ‘Lyndel’s gone isn’t she? She just disappeared.’  
Owen and Tosh stared at him. ‘How did you know that?’ Owen asked.   
‘We’re on it Jack,’ Tosh assured him. ‘Do you know she arrived with John Hart? I’m tracing his vortex signature. I’m sure he had something to do with it.’  
Jack shuffled onto his back, keeping an arm around Ianto. He was a heavy inert lump. ‘Where’s her wrist strap?’  
Tosh looked discomforted. ‘Well that’s really odd. I’m sure it was just on the cabinet in here but it’s gone. She must have been a bit light fingered.’  
Jack gave a sad smile. ‘She didn’t take it but it is gone. You won’t find it or her.’  
‘Jack,’ Owen asked. ‘Do you know where she is, how she disappeared?’  
‘Not exactly,’ Jack said, feeling tears welling again. He was an emotional wreck. He hugged Ianto and kissed the top of his head. ‘She changed the timeline last night, telling you how to save Ianto. He should have died. Whatever the repercussions of that action were, and I have no idea what they could possibly be, but for some reason it changed the future enough that Lyndel never came here.’ The other two were looking at him aghast. ‘It’s all right. She will still exist, because for me, she already does. I have given birth to her. I did know her until her sixteenth birthday. I did send her a note from this time which I wrongly interpreted as being sent by me just before I left the time agency. My time line hasn’t changed so she does, er… will exist.’ He shut his eyes a moment, so very tired and overwhelmed with his brief meeting with his daughter. ‘Whatever made her come here, something or maybe even someone, it might be a descendant of Ianto or someone alive who wouldn’t have been because of Ianto, but something makes it unnecessary for her to come here so she didn’t come.’ And that didn’t even make sense in his own head.  
‘But she was here,’ Tosh said.  
‘Yes, and when the time line diverged there was a time when things could have gone either way.’ He tried not to think of how Lyndel had tried to strangle Ianto before the team had overpowered her, or of the paralysing feeling of déjà vu. ‘Then once it had been resolved, that Ianto would live,’ there was a choke in his voice, ‘I guess as he healed enough to be out of danger, as everything reset…’ It was a good thing this had happened, he knew that but the thought of it hurt.   
‘It appeared to the CCTV cameras in the cell that she just winked out of existence?’ Tosh nodded. ‘In a way she did because back in her own time, in the new timeline, she was going about her normal life, not coming here and will have no idea any of this ever happened. This version no longer existed?’  
Jack nodded.  
‘And the creatures?’ Gwen asked from the doorway. He hadn’t realised she was there. ‘Will they be back? Are things changed enough that they won’t come after you again?’  
‘I don’t know,’ Jack said. He really didn’t want to think about them.  
‘Go back to sleep.’ Owen said. ‘You’re safe here right now. Rest and heal. Both of you.’ Jack tightened his grip on Ianto and gave in to his exhaustion.  
‘That is unbelievably cute,’ Tosh said.


	6. Chapter 6

Ianto lay back in his nest of bean bags and cushions looking down at the others in the hub. They could see him if they looked but they never did. He always found it highly amusing that no one other than him and Jack knew this room existed and yet he had found it, or at least been aware that there must be a room here within his first week of working in the hub. It was so obvious. There was a ladder running up the wall of Jack’s office for heaven’s sake. It had to go somewhere. It was nothing to do with perception filters. It was simply a case of the room hiding in plain view. The windows of Jack’s office were a little taller than the office itself. Only a very astute person would notice that. There was a room above it and it was one of Ianto’s favourite places to hide. Up here, lying on the floor looking down he was remote from whatever was happening and yet he saw things that no one expected him to see.  
He’d been a little surprised to discover what was up here though, the first time he’d climbed up and stuck his head through the hatch. It was a man cave (as if the hub wasn’t one of those already to the nth degree). Carpeted in a deep blue shag pile that must have been installed in the eighties the room held a large TV hooked up to a surround sound system and entertainment system including a playstation. There was shelving holding many games, quite a few of which were classics, videos, DVDs and copious quantities of books. There was a weights station, treadmill and crosstrainer and they were all well used. Jack didn’t solely rely on having to die to maintain his physique. He actually worked out for several hours every night if he had time.  
The windows in the room were odd, extending from the floor to about knee height so that to see down into the hub one had to crouch or lie on the floor. Fortunately there were a large selection of floor cushions and beanbags to make this easy and comfortable to do. As long as he didn’t move suddenly to draw attention to himself, no one other than Jack would ever know he was up here and right now, that was fine by Ianto. Mind you, moving suddenly or even moving much at all was still pretty much beyond him. The effort of getting up here from the timeout room had damn near killed him anyway, even if they had come via the second hidden door which opened off the stairwell below the tourist office. It was the furthest he’d moved in a week. Now he was safely installed he didn’t see himself leaving until Jack decided he needed to. Ianto would be happy to stay here for days.  
Ianto didn’t think the girls had got around to noticing he wasn’t in the timeout bed. If they did notice they’d probably assume Jack had taken him home. Owen knew he was in the building somewhere but he didn’t know where he was. He was still wearing a wee gadget on his finger that sent his pulse rate and oxygen levels to Owen’s computer. He must have it remotely sent to his PDA as well because Ianto was sure his pulse had been sky high and his oxygen way down during the slow but exhausting trip to get here. It was very gratifying to see Owen burst into the hub about five minutes after Jack had him settled on the bean bag. Of course by then the rates were normalising and Jack hadn’t let Owen come up here to see him, assuring him that Ianto was now fine and his stats were normal again. No way Jack wanted any of the others to discover his play room.  
Ianto watched them now, absorbed in some rift originated puzzle, working and flowing around one another. He was desperately pleased to be out of the bland walled boredom of the timeout room. He had been dying of boredom, too exhausted to hold a book, probably didn’t have the concentration levels to read one anyway. Daytime television made him want to scream, but up here, with the sound tuned into the microphones in the hub he could observe the soap opera of his teammate’s lives, notice the glances they gave each other, read the subtext and body language, and hear the bickering. Even though he was separate he could feel part of the place again.  
He was slowly piecing together what had happened. Jack had been very reluctant to talk about it, and Ianto too tired to force it out of him. He’d had to rely on the others to fill him in. Apparently Jack’s daughter Lyndel, after saving his life had then decided to try and kill him but been stopped by Gwen. Also apparently, and Ianto found this truly disturbing, both Lyndel and Jack and had been sure that Ianto had been meant to die that night and that by surviving he had changed the future. Well, when you thought about it that made sense. If anyone died, it changed things in the future, and if they didn’t die, then those things would be different. It just wasn’t every day that someone winked out of existence because of that change. Ianto had erased Jack’s daughter without even meaning to and he was having a bit of trouble coming to terms with that. He had a horrible feeling Jack was having trouble with that too.  
As if conjured by his thoughts Jack came barrelling into the main hub from the archives carrying a file folder. It truly scared Ianto to consider the mess his domain would be in by the time he was well enough to sort it out again. He could only really see the top of his head but Jack seemed agitated. He also seemed to be avoiding looking up and catching his eye. ‘I have to go out,’ Jack said, and the next thing he was sweeping through the cog door. Would any of the others notice he hadn’t stopped to pick up his coat?  
Almost before the door alarms had stopped blaring Jack was letting himself into the room through the secret door from the staircase. His eyes were wild, his body tense and Ianto’s heart clenched in response. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Owen start and turn towards his monitor. Ianto deliberately took some deep calming breaths and tried to settle his heart rate. ‘What is it?’ he asked quietly. ‘What’s wrong?’  
Jack huffed out a breath and held out the brown paper file like it might bite and he expected Ianto to rescue him. If Ianto could have jumped up he would have. ‘Jack, you’re scaring me.’  
Jack just stood there; breathing.  
‘Come and sit down.’ Ianto motioned towards the cushion beside him. His arms hurt far too much to do anything stupid like pat the space beside him. Reluctantly, eyes rolling a little like a spooked horse Jack complied. He put the folder down on the floor and moaned, suddenly bending forward and burying his nose against Ianto’s neck. Ianto was getting worried. ‘Jack what’s wrong?’  
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Jack told his collarbone.  
‘Well you better convince me of that pretty quickly or Owen is going to be tracking down my heart monitor trace because I think my pulse is hitting danger levels.’ He tried to lighten things. ‘You don’t want him finding this room.’  
Jack lifted his head a little and looked down into the hub. Owen was indeed looking at his computer screen with a very worried frown on his face. ‘He’s a good doctor,’ Jack said.  
‘Yes he is,’ Ianto agreed trying once again to bring down the numbers showing on the clamp on his finger. Biofeedback, sometimes he could do it. Jack placed his hand over his and quietly shifted the clamp onto his own finger. Ianto wasn’t particularly sure that was going to help because Jack’s heart rate was not exactly normal either. His oxygen levels however should be perfect. ‘Sneaky,’ he muttered.  
‘Just the way you like me,’ Jack agreed.  
Ianto let him snuffle into his neck for a few more minutes gradually feeling him relax. He would have liked to be able to stroke his hair, run a hand down his back, but his sore arms prohibited him from doing anything that involved his hands. The tension slowly left Jack’s body all the same and Ianto started to wonder if he’d gone to sleep. ‘Jack,’ he called softly.  
‘Hmm.’  
‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’  
‘Ahhh…’ With a sigh Jack rolled over and plumped the pillows so he was sitting up. ‘This,’ he said picking up the folder.  
‘What?’ Ianto couldn’t take the folder. Couldn’t use his hands to open it and see what was inside. He was feeling incredibly frustrated.  
Jack tapped the front of the folder. Ianto could read the words on the cover. ‘Sulphurous bacterial lifeforms,’ he read. ‘So?’  
‘So,’ Jack said slowly, ‘I was trying to find something on that green mould that’s growing on all the north faces of all the city council buildings and Tosh found out that it’s a symbiotic mix of lichen and sulphurous bacteria.’ Ianto nodded. He was following things so far. ‘So I went looking for what we had and tracked down this file. Just now.’ Jack paused and Ianto was sure it was for dramatic effect. ‘I went looking for this just now.’ Jack opened the file and carefully held out the top sheet of paper. His hands were shaking.  
‘This is addressed to me,’ Jack whispered, ‘and whoever put it there must have know I’d be looking for this folder this week.’ He put the handwritten page on Ianto’s lap. The paper was not quite normal, heavy and slightly glossy, more like a sheet of very thin opaque plastic. ‘This is temporally locked paper. What is written on it won’t change even if the timeline does. It must have cost the writer half their year’s wages.’ Jack picked it up and leaned in against Ianto. ‘Someone cared an awful lot that I should get this message, regardless of what happened last week.’ He cleared his throat and began to read. ‘In the year 2008 the Immortal Man lost someone dear to him to Flyer venom.’ Ianto started and Jack’s free hand closed on his leg, holding him firm. ‘The Immortal Man was adrift. He floated through worlds and universes for centuries before setting out to get revenge. He moved heaven and earth to develop a cure for Flyer venom and succeeded in the year 5073 in the midst of the Flyer Wars.’  
Gently Ianto placed his hand over Jack’s and tapped his fingers, about the most movement he could manage against the pulse oximeter which was still on Jack’s finger. Jack started then got the idea and placed it back on Ianto. Down at his computer Owen looked startled. He turned around and glared like he knew someone was playing a trick on him.  
Jack continued reading. ‘Thanks to the Immortal Man, known in those days as Brigadier Admiral Howell, many people’s lives were saved. This knowledge, in conjunction with the information discovered nine years earlier by Ensign L Boeshane, who not so coincidentally was the same man but much much younger, brought about the end of the war and the near destruction of the Flyer race.’   
Jack coughed and when he continued his voice was rough. ‘In this year 5098, years after the Flyer war is over and the race thought to be no longer a threat to the civilised universe the Universal Intelligence Agency has discovered that Flyer scientists have discovered a form of temporal travel and are determined to exploit this to discover Ensign Boeshane’s secret. They plan to use the knowledge to either stop him discovering it, ie possibly killing him before 5064 or find a way to counteract this knowledge so that humans can’t take advantage of it. Neither scenario can be allowed. To that end Intelligence Agency Admiral L Boeshane, daughter of Ensign Boeshane is being sent back in time to the year 2008 to thwart the attempt. There is no set plan. She is either to remove her parent to the future or somehow neutralise the Flyer attempts at changing history. The Admiral has an excellent record of innovative and fast thinking planning during difficult missions. It is fully expected that she will succeed.’  
Now Jack nearly choked. ‘The handwriting is different now. This bit is written by Lyndel herself.’ He swallowed convulsively and his hand gripped Ianto painfully. ‘Lee, I am planting this letter where you will find it in case I am unsuccessful in this mission. I suspect if I fail, that the timeline will change. One scenario then will be that I never exist. I wanted you to know, that in one life, you had a daughter and she has (nearly) forgiven you for breaking your promise to return to her life. If the Flyers don’t get to you, please Lee, please, whatever happens you must work on a Flyer anti venom because that knowledge saves someone I love. I loved you… Lyndel.’  
There was silence in the little room. Jack burrowed in against Ianto. Ianto couldn’t pet his hair but he could, carefully, place his hand on his head. ‘So,’ he said at last, trying to get his head around the time travelling conundrums in the note, ‘because I didn’t die of the venom, something somewhere happened differently and that’s why she disappeared.’  
‘Yeah,’ Jack’s voice was breathy, close to tears.  
‘So I didn’t die so you won’t spend centuries in a…? What did she say?’ He looked at the note. ‘Adrift. Adrift before going into a revenge frenzy and finally working out a way to counteract the venom. Hmmm.’  
Jack didn’t say anything, just held him.  
‘Well presumably though, since the Flyers didn’t get you, and they didn’t get the information,’ he shuddered at the memory of how they had tried, ‘when they were here, things worked out all right anyway. And,’ he said, working it through, ‘obviously, since you haven’t winked out of existence, they didn’t manage to kill you in 5064 either.’ Jack heaved a sigh against his neck. ‘So, as I see it, you still have a chance.’  
Jack finally looked up. ‘What do you mean?’  
‘Well, in the timeline this Lyndel was from I died the other day.’   
Jack nodded reluctantly.  
‘And in that timeline you never got home to keep your promise you made in your message to her, to come back to her.’  
Jack nodded again and a look of hope started to cross his face.  
‘So,’ Ianto concluded, ‘something about my death may have caused that whole thing to go wrong hundreds of years later and somehow stop you going to her. But since I haven’t died it changes that. Either way, you can still go to your daughter when she is 16 and you can save her from becoming that cynical woman that we met here.’ Ianto grinned at Jack. ‘And, you now know how to counteract flyer venom. Your daughter taught us. You don’t need to work it out and discover it in 5073. You can have that knowledge ready for whenever the Flyer’s start their war against people and save hundreds of lives.’ Ianto leant forward and kissed Jack’s forehead. ‘See. It all works out for the best.’  
Jack sank back into the beanbag and closed his eyes. ‘There’s a paradox in there somewhere. I can feel it.’  
‘But it won’t destroy the universe will it?’ Ianto was suddenly anxious.  
‘I don’t think so.’ Jack rubbed at his temples. ‘I need a holiday.’  
‘Mmm,’ Ianto murmured, tired again now the excitement was over. ‘That would be nice.’  
Jack suddenly sat up. ‘I know somewhere we could go. There’s this place in Cornwall.’ He turned to Ianto, sparking like a small child off on a new train of thought. ‘Interested?’  
Ianto couldn’t help but grin. ‘If Owen says it’s all right, then yes. That would be lovely.’

END


End file.
